Stephen Booth
A newspaper and magazine journalist for over 25 years, Stephen Booth was born in the Pennine mill
town of Burnley. He was brought up on the coast at Blackpool, where he began a career in journalism
by editing his school magazine. He wrote his first novel at the age of 12, and knew from the moment he
finished it that he wanted to be a novelist when he grew up.
After graduating from Birmingham Polytechnic (now the City of Birmingham University), Stephen
moved to Manchester to train as a teacher, but escaped from the profession after a spell as a trainee
teacher in a big city comprehensive school.
Starting work on his first newspaper in Cheshire in 1974, Stephen was a specialist rugby union
reporter, as well as working night shifts as a sub-editor on the Daily Express and The Guardian. This
was followed by periods with local papers in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. He was at
various times Production Editor of the Farming Guardian magazine, Regional Secretary of the British
Guild of Editors, and one of the UK's first qualified assessors for the NVQ in Production Journalism.
Freelance work began with rugby reports for national newspapers and local radio stations. But Stephen
also had articles and photographs published in a wide range of specialist magazines, from Scottish
Memories to Countrylovers Magazine, from Cat World to Canal and Riverboat, and one short story
broadcast on BBC radio. In 1999, his writing career changed direction when, in rapid succession, he
was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association ‘Debut Dagger’ award for new writers, won the
£5,000 Lichfield Prize for his unpublished novel The Only Dead Thing, reached the finals of the Dundee
Book Prize, and signed a contract with HarperCollins for a series of crime novels set in the Derbyshire
Peak District.
In 2000, Stephen's first published novel Black Dog marked the arrival in print of his best known
creations - two young Derbyshire police detectives, DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry. Black Dog was
the named by the London Evening Standard as one of the six best crime novels of the year - the only
book on their list written by a British author. In the USA, it won the Barry Award for Best British Crime
Novel and was nominated for an Anthony Award for Best First Mystery. The second Cooper & Fry
novel, Dancing with the Virgins, was shortlisted for the UK's top crime writing award, the CWA Gold
Dagger, and went on to win Stephen a Barry Award for the second year running.
In 2003, Detective Constable Ben Cooper was a finalist for the Sherlock Award for the Best Detective
created by a British author, thanks to his exploits in the third book of the series, Blood on the Tongue.
The publication of Blind to the Bones that year led to Stephen winning the CWA's Dagger in the Library
Award, presented to the author whose books have given readers most pleasure. The same book was
nominated for the Theakston’s UK Crime Novel of the Year award in 2005.
Subsequent titles have included One Last Breath (2004), The Dead Place (2005) – both finalists for UK
Crime Novel of the Year - Scared to Live (2006), Dying to Sin (2007), The Kill Call (2009), Lost River
(2010), The Devil's Edge (2011), Dead and Buried (2012) and the latest Cooper & Fry title Already Dead,
which is published in June 2013 by Sphere. A special Ben Cooper short story, Claws, was also
published in 2007 to launch the new Crime Express imprint. All the books are set in England's beautiful
and atmospheric Peak District.
In addition to publication in the USA, Canada and Australia, translation rights in the Cooper & Fry
series have been sold in fifteen languages - French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian and Japanese.
Stephen left newspaper journalism in 2001 to write novels full time. He and his wife Lesley now live in
rural Nottinghamshire. In recent years, Stephen Booth has become a Library Champion in support of
the UK’s ‘Love Libraries’ campaign. He has also represented British literature at the Helsinki Book Fair
in Finland, appeared with Alexander McCall Smith at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival in Australia, filmed
a documentary for 20th Century Fox on the French detective Vidocq, taken part in online chats for
World Book Day. He is a popular speaker at conferences, conventions, libraries, bookshops and
festivals around the world, and loves to meet readers.